Friday Jukebox: Leaguefest 2013 Edition

We hope to see you in June! Make plans now, set the time aside, come on out. You won’t regret it. Just think about the live music that’ll be going on! Which got me thinking about the great tradition of music around our host city: the jazz, the blues, the standards, the off-Broadway theater, the rock and roll…

I had to pick someone doing this song. It’s one of the original Robert Johnson blues songs. It seems like everyone has done it, and the problem here is selecting from the abundance of excellent covers. But Jake and Elwood seemed ideal for our purposes.

You know, this is a lot slower than I remember it. Did Ol’ Blue Eyes do a different song about the Windy City also?

Oh, I’m quite excited about Leaguefest! And there’s more Chicago music after the jump…

There’s a YouTube video of Sonny and Cher singing song, with amusing animation. But Jim Croce’s is the definitive rendition.

The audio here is reasonably good for what is basically a bootleg. But there’s no way I’m doing a repetoire of songs about Chicago without this one.

Ferris Bueller: men who were teenagers in the 1980’s wanted to be him because we all wished we had the audacity to do what he did in this scene. That and his girlfriend was smokin’ hot and he got to drive a Ferrari.

The first performer to ever play the role of Velma Kelly was Chita Rivera — and Jerry Orbach, who you may remember from such television shows as Law & Order, was cast opposite her as the first Billy Flynn! But I couldn’t find any video of Ms. Rivera doing this iconic number given that her run on this play was in 1977, so I had to settle for the “original” London cast from a more recent revival. It’s a little different than the movie.

Green Bay Packers fan though I was and still am, those 1985 Bears were really, really good. At football, I mean. Obviously, I didn’t mean they were good at dancing; the evidence above speaks for itself.

Can you dig it? Yes, I can. I’d be remiss to omit these guys, who at the time they released this iconic song had only just stopped calling themselves the “Chicago Transit Authority” after a threat of legal action by the actual CTA. Stupid lawyers, messing everything up for the rest of us.

What a great, world-class city Chicago is. What a great choice Mark’s made for our venue this year. Come on and join us in the City of the Big Shoulders at LeagueFest 2013! And share your favorite Chicago music below.